cornish wood burner

Anyone any experience with the cheaper 12 volt winches. Ideally 1 to 1.5 tonne pull with a remote control but remotes are available separately so not a deal breaker. It's only for my own firewood and there are several I've seen on Amazon from £60 to £120. I do appreciate a winch for that money will not be a quality product but not sure I could justify spending much more than that sort of money. It's basically a toy to make the job easier than the manual methods I use now.

It might pay you to think about ditching the steel buckles and bundling smaller to suit the chipper if possible. They will find cutting bundles and pulling the straps out hard and dangerous work. They will also be left with a mess to clear up. The cut bundles will degenerate into a tangle of pieces pointing in every direction making it hard to feed the chipper. It will be very time consuming for them and I suspect they may then go down the round wood route. We never cut bundles and never buy any with steel buckles, for the above reasons. Given a choice of going back to cutting bundles or chipping all round wood it would have to be the round wood. As you say a little bit more ash but nothing to worry about imo.

Get some samples and agree a design, edges and colours with your customer. The first few lines that form the borders inside the edgers make a big difference to the look of the job, so best to leave some bricks with your customer for them to try and make sure they are happy with the design and colours.

You can get motors that run at 500 rpm. Not sure if spline drive is an option for them but if it was then it would make it a simple job. Worth enquiring I would have thought.

We burn a bit more than 1000 tonnes of slab wood per annum. We buy in by the tonne, it's cheaper than round but costs more to chip. It depends how fussy the boiler is, but ours goes straight in. I find it dries much quicker than round wood so as a result it's normally up to 10 % drier. If you bundle well with plastic welded straps ( no steel buckles)it should be able to be chipped in the bundle, assuming the chipper is big enough of course. Better you bundle the less mess you will have. Bark has slightly less heat/kg but the lower mc more than outweighs this.

I use a s/h ride on mower to mow similar. Easier and quicker than a walk behind.

There doesn't look to be as much metal around the pin hole as I would have expected. Presumably the hole is the original size? It wouldn't have been enlarged to take up wear in either the bracket or ram. Is the pin a good fit in what remains? If the answers are yes no yes then I would be talking to the manufacturer. Just had another look and the hole looks uneven/ worn, pictures can be deceptive though

My first thought that's a good link Kevin and EVERYONE should read it. Any high pressure fluid system failure or accident could cause an injury resulting in amputation or worse so take care. My opinion on hoses is above all to avoid close contact when under pressure. Use protective coils etc for abrasion resistance only where necessary but do not rely on them to protect you against wayward fluid. Robust conduit or solid flexible cover must be strong to warrant its use at the expense of visual inspection. I would be tempted to do this if I was expecting to work very close to the hose though. Inspect all hoses as often as you can, even ones with shields and change if you have doubts. However few of us will change a sound hose purely on age but if its in a critical position or system then it's a probably a good plan. Probably a bit more advice than you were expecting John, also you could inspect, and change hoses regularly and one could still burst without warning, just the luck of the draw but you will have minimised the risk.

I'd be very surprised if any MEWP owners thought their arm would drop like a stone in the event of a hose burst. Worth a mention to anyone who had that worry though. However the fact remains that if working in the middle of a tree say 15 metres up, extraction could be difficult without hydraulic power. Apart from the contamination issues outlined by Mr Gray the danger from oil entering the body from a bursts or pinhole might be worth a mention. This can happen even up to a range of 3 or 4 inches so any hoses that share possible personnel space should be treated accordingly. Serious health problems can result from high pressure oil entering the body so don't run your hand over the hose to find that pinhole!!!

Hydraulic hoses have a finite life and if they are showing signs of aging they should fail or you should replace them anyway. If the machine is in the region of 8 years old then definely replace the hoses. If you work on a maximum 10 year life remember a hose might have sat on the shelf for a few years before being fitted to your machine so this time should be taken off its life. Critical hoses should be changed before this. Presumably you would consider a hose failure when you are aloft fairly inconvenient.

I've found good staff are hard to find and judging by this thread I'm not alone. With this in mind it's always best to look after the ones you want to keep.

Our inspector visits, records all equipment and sends us the results by email with relevant attachments. We can then record the attachments on our system. He obviously informs us of fails or advisories at the time. Vehicles are recorded in folders with MOTs and servicing history but most other servicing and inspections are on computer.

I think you may be missing the gear drive on the crank. I did something similar years ago and had to use the old crank rather than the better straight drive one.

£20k plus a heat exchanger for 7.5 tonne capacity in 2013. Heat input 300 kW. That is the biggest single batch machine they make. Doubles are available with 15 tonne capacity. Smaller machines with 2.5 or 5 tonnes capacity are available. They must be busy as the salesman hasn't got back to me to answer some queries I asked 10 days ago Pto, lister or electric powered.

All the info is at work but I think the one I looked at was around £23k. It was a while ago and I've not really had the time to go into it deeply yet but there is a lot of choices in size and presumably price. They also do continuous conveyor dryers but more money.

I'm currently looking at an Alvan Blanch batch dryer to dry chip and peat. It will obviously take a while to dry logs but it might be OK to finish them.

While my husky dealer turned his nose up at the red stihl I had, he didn't say he wouldn't honour the warranty if I used it. He did say green was best for the modern saws and put a litre in the package.

Very true but as a start anyone with large commercial glasshouses in your area would be worth a try. Many nurserys we have dealings with heat with wood chip and if they have a step grate boiler they would probably not even dry it.

We have large wood chip boilers and are currently looking at drying chip to burn. If this comes off then we could take several hundred tonnes a year. Other large boiler users might be going along the same road so might be worth enquiring if you know of any local to you.

Hi and welcome Townie Loop handle are easier to control if you are cutting above ground level such as sides of hedge or when using attachments such as hedge trimmer or chainsaw heads. For strimming level open areas bike handle are far better.. I've not used the modern stills but I've read some adverse comments about the 4 mix. I wasn't too impressed about the spec or price of the Stihl km series when I looked. My point is don't limit yourself to Stihl, many others out there.

Do you know the power needed to run your processor. Picking a motor if you know that is easy then.

Decide what hourly rate you are worth being employed then double it for self employed. Tools, van, premises, electricity, accountant all need paying for. You will not work 100% of your time and there will be jobs that go wrong and customers that won't pay. Good luck with it but I would put your prices up otherwise what's the point.

It's a little way away but we are thinking about changing a couple of tunnels to a glasshouse. This probably will go ahead in a couple of years time so we will have the structure for sale then. It might even be almost free if you take them down yourselves. Tunnel area will be probably be in the region of 1600 square metres, but more might be available.

Only if you tip once a week and you get strong sun in between.

Most of our tunnels have mesh sides with wind up side vents. All the ground tubes are concreted into the ground even in the middle of multi span ones. We tex screw the hoops to them then. The bottom rail is clamped or bolted to the hoop or ground tube depending on levels. Several ways of doing it but one is a short length of tube with a length of flat welded to it with two holes to take the 4x2 side rails and then weld a nut in the tube so you can wind in a bolt to clamp onto the hoop. Our tunnels are in a windy valley so that's a proven method which you can buy off the shelf. Windward side can lift from the polythene pull so for extra security tex screw again or bolt if extreme conditions. You want at least 25ltr of concrete in each hole unless you are very sheltered. Any less could lift out in strong winds